The Very Big Marketing Guide for WordPress: 100+ Resources
Brenda Barron   – November 9, 2017
1 Comment

The Very Big Marketing Guide for WordPress: 100+ Resources

You start a business and think, “Well, the hard work is done. Now it’s time to make money.” Right… But where is that money going to come from? Sorry to burst your bubble, but there’s still a lot more work to be done here.

If you want your website (and business) to start making money, then you need an audience. Which means you’ve got to get out there and market it. Ugh, marketing. Amirite?

Here’s the thing: the term “marketing” encompasses a huge array of methods you can employ to spread the word about your business. If you’ve chosen to run your website from WordPress, you’re in luck because it’s inherently set up to help you market your business from nearly every angle. Except TV ad spots and mailers. (Does anyone even use those anymore?)

In this post, I’m going to cover the different ways you could and should be marketing your WordPress business.

An Overview of Marketing for the Digital Age

Thanks to the Internet, cloud-based software, and crazy-intuitive content management systems like WordPress, there are so many ways marketing can be done these days. Not every marketing funnel will be right for your business, but it’s important to know the options so you can make an informed decision on what is the best route for you.

Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

Traditional marketing typically refers to “tangible” marketing collateral like business cards, ads in magazines or newspapers, billboards, company brochures and even radio and TV commercials. Digital marketing refers to everything done online.

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing refers to the types of advertisements that explicitly reach out to consumers and try to convince them to convert. Think of cold calling, tradeshows, and emailing purchased lists. Inbound marketing, on the other hand, pertains to efforts that are meant to establish credibility for a brand, in turn making their offering so appealing that consumers take the initiative to convert on their own. Most of what we do nowadays is inbound.

B2B Marketing vs. B2C Marketing

“B2B” stands for “business to business,” so these types of marketing efforts target businesses as the end user. “B2C” stands for “business to consumer,” so these efforts target the individual consumer.

The above categorizations are high-level overviews of what marketing is. However, in order to decide which type(s) of marketing will be most beneficial to your business model, it’s important to understand what each entails.

A Guide to Better Business Marketing with WordPress

In the following better business marketing guide, I’ve included the most popular types of marketing along with:

  • A list of online resources that regularly cover topics on that type of marketing (and are worth subscribing to!)
  • A list of articles that deal with various subjects related to marketing.
  • Links to online training opportunities if you prefer to follow along with tutorials and gain hands-on experience.

Content Marketing

This is one of the larger marketing buckets as it encompasses so many different types of content generation: blogs (including guest blogging), infographics, video, white papers, case studies, ebooks, press releases, and more. The goal is to establish thought leadership and building trust with your audience by creating highly valuable and engaging content.

Resources

Articles Worth Bookmarking

Training

Search Marketing

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is often lumped into content marketing, but there are some search marketing efforts that can stand on their own, like paid search ads. The goal is to give your site a boost in search—either organically or paid—so that consumers come seek you out directly.

Resources

Articles Worth Bookmarking

Training

Email marketing

As of 2017, there are 3.7 billion people with email addresses. This presents an awesome opportunity for businesses to reach consumers through a platform that they’re already constantly connected to. It’s even more effective if those consumers willingly sign up to receive a company’s newsletter through their website.

Resources

Articles Worth Bookmarking

Training

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Social Media Marketing

You’ll often see people refer to social media marketing as a form of content marketing. This is technically true as you’re creating content (albeit very short content) for these specialized social platforms. The goal here, unlike with content marketing, however, is to create connections and directly communicate with the audience.

Resources

Articles Worth Bookmarking

Training

eCommerce marketing

For any business that’s involved in generating sales online, ecommerce marketing supports those efforts. So any time you see a pop-up advertising a sale, a page dedicated to upcoming deals, a hello bar with a discount code, and so on, those are meant to give consumers quick, valuable information that’ll hopefully drive a sale.

Resources

Articles Worth Bookmarking

Top Marketing Resources to Follow

In addition to the marketing niche-specific resources above, I wanted to share a list of some of the best general marketing blogs. Some of them appeared in the lists above, but they’re definitely worth another shout-out as these are the hands-down experts on everything related to marketing.

And if you can’t get enough of marketing tutorials, be sure to check these out:

Wrapping Up

As you can see, marketing isn’t a simple matter. But seeing as how you’ve chosen to manage your business’s online face with WordPress, there’s so much you can achieve within this CMS when you know what’s available and what the tool is capable of. The resources above will teach you all about the strategy and trends, so you can come back to your WordPress website and do a whole lot of awesome marketing stuff with it.

Over to you: Who is your favorite marketing “guru” and how did you first stumble upon him or her?

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Brenda Barron Brenda is a freelance writer from Southern California. She specializes in WordPress, tech, and business and founded WP Theme Roundups. When not writing about all things, she's spending time with her family.